If the wind had picked up, or if it had rained, it just wouldn’t have looked the same, clusters of blossom were hiding in plain sight

So glad I decided to walk, rather than drive; on the way back it got even better

I think this might be the same beautiful animal I saw in the field a few days ago, I think it is a roe deer, not something we’ve seen here before, red deer occasionally from off the moors, but not roe. I felt a little sorry for it, it looked like it might be happier in a herd (but its OK, it seems they are solitary animals).

Both Mr Uphilldowndale and I have family that were either medical orderlies or medics, my great uncle is on the far left of this photo, I’m assuming he would have served with the Sherwood Foresters regiment, but I’m not sure. (If any passing reader can tell me anything about when and where this photo was taken, please do, as there is not detail written on the back).

It was when I saw the bunker at Essex Farm Cemetery that was used as am advanced dressing station the grim reality of the conditions hit me. Confined and claustrophobic, the stream of catastrophically wounded soldiers that passed under its gas curtain is an unbearable thought.

It is the grim reality that adjacent to the advanced dressing stations were the hastily dug graves, that became the last resting place of many of the casualties. I suppose at least these guys had a marked grave. Small mercies.

Women weren’t allowed this close to the front, they were further back in the evacuation line, which was all things considered very sophisticated, and necessity being the mother of invention the Great War led to many medical advances that we take for granted today. But at such a cost.

Nurse Nellie Spindler was one of only two women to be killed and buried in Belgium during the Great War, she was a Yorkshire lass.

It all seems a little odd, first we were prisoners to the storm, the beast from the east; we’ve certainly had more depth of snow in the past, but never such a blizzard, it roared on for 36 hours.

We hunkered down and were grateful for lives both personal and professional that allow for a generous dollop of flexibility, and that no longer involve the great debate of can we get the boys to school in this? Will it be open when we get there? And will it be closing anytime soon? We don’t miss that scenario at all…

It was Wednesday before the ‘garden cat’ reappeared from the drift that had engulfed it a week before

Then more snow came on Thursday and ambushed it again, at least it covered the filthy snow* and as Clive James describes it ‘hushed the whole thing up’.

There was something rather disorientating about so much snow and ice at this time of year, the light, the birds singing, when they could be heard over the roar of the wind, it just didn’t seem natural. So many hungry birds.

Today it has been 11c, in the defrosting pond toads are croaking (Spud the dog, scared them away from a photo opportunity) and amongst the snowdrops

bees are humming and feasting. Whatever next.

* this was the first and probably the last time you’ll find me cleaning windows, at –3c, after the blizzard passed, we couldn’t see out!

We found in our absence the council had been doing some work on the gullies at the side of the road. They’d grubbed up a young yew tree, it was lying exposed, root ball and all on the far side of the gully. I thought I could probably mange to carry it home, to plant it for perpetuity, yew trees are thought to be special, you see, I was wrong, it was far too heavy.

I returned later with the Landrover, and it was a bit of a fight to get it in on my own, a passing neighbour offered to help, but I declined her offer, she was wearing a beautifully cut tweed jacket, far to nice for wrestling muddy roots of which there were many more that I’d realised.

Look what lovely roots.

I think I’ll let Mr Uphilldowndale dig the hole, once we’ve decided where it will be happy for the next 300 years or so.

It made me think of the quote, by Felix Dennis that forms the tittle of this post, I’d seen it at an exhibition at Kew Gardens. So I looked it up, once I’d got the mud off my clothes, and look at this beautiful, beautiful poem. Felix Dennis, how come I’d never heard of him before?

Whosoever plants a tree
Winks at immortality.
Woodland cherries, flowers ablaze,
Hold no hint of human praise;
Hazels in a hidden glade
Give no thought to stake or spade;
London planes in Georgian squares
Count no patrons in their prayers;
Seed and sapling seek no cause,
Bark and beetle shun applause;
Leaf and shoot know nought of debt,
Twig and root are dumb— and yet
Choirs of songbirds greet each day
With eulogies, as if to say:
‘Whosoever plants a tree
Winks at immortality!’

Cast you minds back, to November and I’ll tell you the adventure of a bold, but not very bright bird. Primrose the chicken.

Dusk arrived early, and the role call of chickens showed we had a problem. Primrose was missing.

We called the neighbours, searched their gardens, scoured the lane by touch light, looked in the shrubs and bushes, all to no avail. Eventually we had to conclude she might have been picked off by a fox, who, made bold by hunger, made twilight strike, or she had gone broody and gone off somewhere to make a nest. We called off the search.

It was bonfire night, rockets streaked across the night sky scattering glittering stars in their wake, Spud the dog shifted uneasily in his bed. Eventually all fell quiet, and then the rain came by the bucketful pounding on the roof in the small hours.

At first light, Mr Uphilldowndale went out to resume the search, to be honest he was expecting to find a drift of feathers somewhere nearby.

He couldn’t find anything. However, he could hear something. Cluuuuccckaaaa, Chahhhaaa, Cluck! But where was it coming from?

As befits the start of a pantomime ‘It’s behind you!’ he turned on his heels to find…

Can you see in the bulrushes, in the middle of the field pond? Oh you silly bird.

She’d been standing, up to he knees (do chickens have knees?) in the water, all night.

Mr Uphilldowndale gallantly went in , braving chilly waters and slippery pond liner to get her*. If you’d like to see how he got on, pop over to the video.

We took her into the kitchen to warm up. She can’t have had much sleep she kept nodding off in Mr Uphilldowndales arms.

we don’t know why she was there, she will flap and fly a little, especially if startled. She obviously didn’t have sufficient ‘runway’ to make her way back again.

* I think I’d have built a bridge, I’ve never been fond of cold water.

Striding out in the light and fresh air, can be a challenge on short winter days. I’m lucky that I can flex my work a little, so as to grab the best of the day, for a cobweb blowing yomp up the hill. My was it chilly today, the wind was biting.

A seasonal selection of photos.

Banks of cloud sit on the hills

I find it interesting how some fields at the same altitude seem ‘hold the snow’ more than others, I imagine it is to do with how they have been grazed

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Uphilldowndale

Watching nature take its course, from the top of a hill in a rural area of Derbyshire, England……

Here I write about this, that and the other; posts are about whatever catches my eye, or captures my imagination: my take on the world usually comes from a rural perspective, but I make no promises…….

I have a bit of a ‘magpie’ mind, it is eclectic and has a preference for collecting bright shiny things. Comments are very welcome.

The cast… Mr Uphilldowndale (Mr Uhdd), and our sons, Tom aged 22 and Joe 20 . In addition there’s Jammy and Dodger the cats a small flock of maverick chickens and last but not least a bouncy dog named Spud, who has many adventures
I love the landscape here and the wildlife, I have a special interest in lumps of rock, as you will see if you stay around for a while…….
Welcome to this blog, I hope you find something of interest, and if you do, please call again; next time you are passing.
Heather Uphilldowndale